Cities are forever haunted by the ghosts of unrealised projects, as demonstrated by NeoMam’s recent rendering of an unrealised entry for the 1858 competition to design New York’s Central Park.

[tttgallery id=”787″]

We tend not to see the built environment as a product of chance. But what eventually comes to fill a space could just as easily have been something completely different. Designs go through countless revisions. Brilliant proposals are rejected for arbitrary reasons. The endlessly minute modifications people make after a design is completed are subject to forces way outside the control of anyone involved in the initial development.

NeoMam’s recent rendering of an unrealised entry for the 1858 competition to design New York’s Central Park reminds us that even the most seemingly timeless and treasured parts of the urban landscape were the subject of decisions that could have easily gone an entirely different way. Designed by park engineer John J. Rink, the entry proposes having trees arranged in several symmetrical patterns, with a series of concentric circles located on the park’s northside standing out most prominently. Unlike the Central Park that we know now, which was designed by F. L. Olmsted and C. Vaux, Rink’s design is much neater and more manicured than the successful design and much more akin to the French jardin. Although Rink’s was the only unsuccessful proposal whose plans still survive today, there were 32 entries to the competition in total. That’s 32 variations of probably the most well-known park in the world.

[tttgallery id=”786″ template=”content-slider”]

Looking at a Ghost

There’s something rather uncanny about the rendering of Rink’s design. It’s almost like looking at a ghost, haunting the park and the city we’re so familiar with.

Sticking with New York, at around the same period, two curious unrealised designs for public infrastructure also strike a ghostly tone. Dr Rufus Henry Gilbert’s 1880 design for a pneumatic elevated railway would have had passengers transported through a pair of “atmospheric tubes” suspended by a succession of gothic-style wrought iron arches. Thanks to the Wall Street Panic of 1873, the proposal didn’t leave the drawing board.

In general, pneumatic railways have failed to catch on, despite still being entertained to this day as a viable form of mass transit – something seen most recently in the ridicule that followed Elon Musk’s “Hyperloop”. Because of this long history of failure, Gilbert’s design has an odd quality of being both retro and futuristic, and therefore quite tragic and even unsettling, since it upsets our idea of historical time as something linear and inevitable.

Manhattan Nocturne

The second design is Raymond Hood’s 1925 proposal to build a series of “apartment bridges” linking Manhattan Island with the mainland. Intended to ease congestion in the city and provide housing with spectacular waterfront views, the astonishing drawings he made for this plan are works of art in their own right. Recalling James Abbott McNeill Whistler’s nocturnes, Hood rendered the structure all in black, with the imposing apartment bridge dwarfing the cars it carries across the river and the boats beneath. It feels like we’re gazing upon a dream. Then again, that’s always what we’re doing when we look at a plan for something that doesn’t exist in reality.

As Darran Anderson points out in a 2015 article for Dezeen, these unrealised plans can prepare the ground for future projects, and these new projects can in turn lend legitimacy to the original failure. More than that, though, these unrealised plans give the lie to that all-too-common mantra of the market-driven urban economy “there is no alternative”. Instead, we see that the city contains within it an infinite array of alternate unrealised futures. Nothing that exists now was inevitable. Anything that went unrealised still exists as a latent potential, ready to be resurrected.

_

For the original Source of the Renderings click here.

Turf Design Studio wins the Australian Good Design Award in the category Best in Class Architecture & Urban Design with the design for the Central Park Public Domain.

[tttgallery id=”685″]

In 2007, Turf Design Studio together with Jeppe Aagaard Andersen was commissioned by Frasers Property to redesign the public area of the Carlton United Brewery site. Within the framework of collaborative design workshops in Sydney, London and Paris, TURF conceived an expanded and interconnected network of new places – streets, lanes, parks and plazas.

The terrain offered immense possibilities: In the centre was the former C&U brewery, surrounded by a built fabric of some of Sydney’s oldest worker’s cottages, terraces and warehouses. Turf Studio’s aim was to reinterpret and expand the history of the site while creating a new site in Sydney.

[tttgallery id=”686″ template=”content-slider”]

Central Park’s public domain exemplifies how a well-considered and legible public domain framework can both unite a site and restitch a city. At the heart of the site is Chippendale Green; a north-facing park of terraced, sun drenched lawns tucked away from the frenetic pace of the city.

A large public park was always central to the masterplan intent. Orientating the park’s long axis with the frontage of existing Chippendale terraces proved vital in creating a place of meaning and connectedness for the community.

Since its opening in 2012, Central Park has quickly become a popular innovation in city life. From daily walks with dogs or yoga classes, to hosting two-month markets, to numerous major annual events, Central Park has been adopted by the community at all levels.

[tttgallery id=”687″ template=”content-slider”]

“Urban design that is effecting and directing social fabric of the community.“

The jury comments on its decision as follows: “An impressive icon of urban design that has added much to the urban architecture, setting new benchmarks in central urban design and positively effecting and directing social fabric of the community.“

Sustainability principles

Just as good to know: Sustainability was and is at the heart of the Central Park mission, including minimum Five Green Star Certification and the achievement of carbon and water neutrality throughout the project. It was critical that each phase of the development process embraces these sustainability principles and strives for innovation and measurable performance in sustainability.